Going Mac, Will I look back...

I need the help of the Chess.com Community. Mac users. WHAT should I do for the best chess program for Mac? I've heard that Shredder has made leaps and bounds and now has better database functionality? Or should I just buy Virtual PC/Parallel Windows and get ChessBase?

VMWare Fusion + Windows Install Disk + Chessbase or whatever works great and is what I primarily use.

Hiarcs Chess Explorer is a pretty decent and is usable but isn't really up to par with CB I bought it because of the positive feedback I've heard, and it really isn't bad. But the big issue is that you can't really use the majority of engines with it. Still, you can get Hiarcs, Stockfish, Komodo, and a few others working -- just not Rybka or Houdini, which are the one's most people really want.

There are some free options like SCID, but they all pretty well suck compared to the payware options.

If you have a student in the family, the student pricing for VMWare is very reasonable. If you don't have a student, it's a bit pricey and you can look into other options:

VMWare + PC software's a little slow compared to native hardware, but not by much. If it's a new Mac and you're moving from a slightly older PC you won't see a difference. I would never recommend bootcamp as a solution, having to reboot for switching applications just sucks!

Oh, noticed I didn't fully answer the question: they don't provide updates as a service, but using TWIC or ICOFY is the simple answer to that issue.

Note that if you use the ICOFY database HIARCS has a file size limit and will not read the entire ICOFY database if you merge the A, B, C, D, and E files together as it exceeds that file size limit.

Also some features of OSX Mountain Lion (10.8.x) are not fully supported in the current build. I assume that will change in the near future. None of the missing features are stability issues or effect usability in substantial ways.

My guess is that you would find Chess Explorer to be adequate but not great. Consider it to be about at the same place ChessBase was for Chessbase 6.

One thing I LIKE about Chess Explorer is that it uses PGN files. This means that you can run CQL queries against it.

Of course, to run CQL you need a dos emulator or windows install, but hopefully that will change one day.

We used Hiarcs Chess Explorer in the VIP Commentary room at the London Chess Classic for relaying games and it worked great. It's really smooth to use, has all the basic features that you'd expect such as those mentioned above and is constantly being developed.

The main problem with it is, is that it has a game limit of 1.75 million games for a single database meaning it can not yet really be a substitute for Chessbase as a serious database tool.

The game limit isn't a huge issue if you are willing to divide your games up by some reasonable criteria. For example, for investigating current players you really don't need games from 1963, games from the last few years will suffice. But it is an issue that means you have to do file management in a way you would not with Chessbase.

Again, think of it in terms of Chessbase 6 -- it really is pretty equivilant to that release: all the basic functionality, some additional features that make things nice, but just enough bumps in the road to make you notice that it isn't perfect, but nothing you can point to and say it's really broken.

CQL is "chess query language," and is a really useful tool if you learn how to use it. Info here: http://www.rbnn.com/cql/